A Study on Space Masts Based on Octahedral Truss Family

Octahedral truss is a kind of geometry-rich structure, which can be used extensively in space missions. Regular octahedron is the basis of other various octahedral trusses. Firstly, five basic units of octahedral truss or derivatives are proposed, and the structural performances are investigated briefly. Mechanism features and formations are then studied for fundamental deployable modules in conjunction with the basic units. And knowledge of geometry is formulated in detail for different deployable modules, especially for variable geometry truss and tensegrity. The corresponding mast formations are also developed. Finally, kinematic analysis approach is proposed concisely for statically determinate deployable octahedral truss, and spares matrix storage and reduced matrix technique are employed to improve the computation efficiency.